Houston will host Children's Defense Fund event this week

HOUSTON {AP} Better care for the nation's poorer children will be the driving theme behind this year's annual meeting of the Children's Defense Fund, which opens this week in Houston.

The four-day event will focus on better health care and early prevention programs that keep children from flunking out of school and turning to crime.

"Clearly, the face of poverty in America today is that of a child," says Marian Wright Edelman, the CDF's founder and president.

"Children make up 40 percent of America's poor, and it hurts them terribly. It stunts their growth, impairs their healthy and successful development, undermines their ability to be ready for school and reduces their likelihood of success in school."

Ms. Edelman has been pushing for better health care for America's youngest citizens, including efforts for CHIP, the children's health insurance program aimed at families with incomes too large to qualify for Medicaid and too small to afford private coverage.

The conference begins Thursday and will include discussions of after-school programs, early childhood education and how to keep kids from dropping out of school.

Ms. Edelman adds that schools pay more when poor children need special education or must repeat a grade. Ultimately, she says, taxpayers pay the soaring costs of incarceration when Americans fail to respond to societal problems caused by poverty, illiteracy and poor health.

She asks why Americans would want to spend billions on high-tech prisons when a fraction of that figure used on young people and prevention would eliminate the need.

It's no accident that the conference is being held in Texas.

Roughly 1.4 million Texas children under 19 lack health insurance, she says, and only 74 percent of the state's children are immunized.

Texas is home to more than 5 million of the nation's 69 million children, with almost 29 percent of them living in poverty.

The majority of those poor children, Ms. Edelman adds, have at least one parent who works.

Edelman expects 2,000 to 3,000 child advocates to attend the conference, which will be based at the downtown Hyatt Regency and which will include dozens of training sessions and workshops.